That’s exactly it. Aside from the fact you have more bodies (without, like you say, losing your flexibility and focus) to get the word out, you have a wider skill-set. Not everyone can make videos, design T-shitrs, put together an e-newsletter, project manage a book launch, netwok, write and disseminate press releases, AND schmooze editors – even if they DID have the time. Put 20 people together and the chances are at least one of you will be able to do each of those things.

I think that writers need to tap into the collective, collaborative power of the internet more. By branding, or building a label/stable, where resources are pooled, the advertising base could be bigger. Things like online youtube trailers, conventions, tshirts and merchandise would become more possible.

Banding together and acting like a small-publishing house (operating with very little overhead) would allow us to accomplish more, and faster, than working as independents, but we’d still be free of the traditional publishing paradigm.

I DO think you can blend group and individual – that’s what were starting to do with our blog – I want us to be like the Beat Poets, the Abstract Expressionists, or Andy’s Factory – people love the group, but theyhave their favourites. A rather less highbrow analogy would be a boyband :p

I don’t want to sound authoritarian or philistine, but being well-known and trusted is almost as high as anything else – if we give someone the password to the website and the right to use our name we’re taking a heck of a risk – our name is the one thing we really have, and one rotten apple could ruin it for all of us.

That strikes me as particularly true. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it, but there’s this idea making rounds recently, that in order to survive, as a publisher, you’ve got to built up a core audience the way magazines have for the past four decades or so. Find the readers first, and then find the words they want. They’re attached to your brand the way people are attached to, say, The New Yorker (in that they know what content they’re getting), or … if we look at a publishing house: McSweeney’s.

Of course, the problem with collective brand over authorial brand would be that – as individual writers – you can’t build up a community clustered around yourself as much as you might be able to, had you been writing alone. But I guess that’s all a matter of balance, and perspective.

The other criteria, especially now we are drawing from a bigger pool and have a wider choice, are that people’s work really tightly fits the contemporary fiction, urban indie niche; that they share our values as expressed in the manifesto; and probably more and more taht they are doing interesting things online so as to expand our reach, and make it a more exciting place to be. Oh, and being absolutely drop-dead brilliant is a prerequisite.

Two more answers: we are not currently looking for new members – we just added a new tranche. But if people are interested in joining us in the future that’s great – and (I had a long discussion on this with Richard Nash about his Cursor group over at: http://loudpoet.com/2009/09/29/6qs-richard-eoin-nash-social-publisher ) although we do not have and never will have an inner and outer circle – that’s just patronising – we are all as happy to promote the work of people outside YZ as we are those inside.

Selection – we’d like to perpetuate the myth that we’re a mysterious cabalistic sect. In fact what happens is one of us says “have you seen x, y, or z! They’re amazing!” and next time we’re looking for members I invite them in.